fluoronium

That's the first ice storm warning in likely over a decade for many of those ILX counties, mine included. I'm going to try getting some time lapses of the accumulating ice. I know the NAM seems to be the outlier with the northward extent of the warm air, but every recent shot at ice IMBY has always been killed by warmer than modeled temps. Even so, at least a few hours of freezing rain looks to be nearly certain here, so it should be enough to make the trees sparkly.

I'm confused by the statement on the warm layer here in regards to hindered ice accumulations as it seems that this would favor more freezing rain over sleet. I have trouble believing that warm raindrops at the surface make that much of a difference regarding ice accretion, but I'm also just an arm chair . It's just that the amount of energy released by turning liquid water to ice is just SO much higher than cooling the liquid by a few degrees. Even if the rain drops are a toasty 9°C, the energy that's released by cooling the rain drops to 0°C is only ~10% of the energy released from freezing the liquid at 0°C to solid at 0°C. I've definitely seen the high precip rates hinder accumulations though. I remember witnessing nearly an inch of rain fall in 3 hours with surface temps of 28°F~29°F and only receiving a light glaze.

I'm not sure if "irrelevant" is the right word considering the higher infectivity and at least some ability to evade antibody neutralization. It's certainly not the biggest issue in the near term though, considering the virus (regardless of strain) is looking like it's going to run through most people before they have a chance at getting a vaccine.

Maybe they report it as freezing rain if the wet bulb temperature is below freezing. 34F and rain again here. Futility records in play

I'm liking the stormy pattern, but man, central IL (and IN) have not been the place to be recently. Persistent storm track means I'm always too far south for the good snows and too far north for the winter severe. Over, and over, and over. I hope I don't have to wait till March/April for a shot at a 4"+ snowfall. Halloween 2019 is still the biggest snowfall IMBY for the past two seasons.

Unfortunately we have pretty much all of our eggs in one basket when it comes to vaccines. All but maybe 2 or 3 of the vaccine trials target the spike protein, so if there is a mutation that changes the spike protein enough to bypass immunity from the vaccines, we're in trouble. On the flip side, we are now very well equipped to make vaccines to target a new mutation. New mRNA vaccines could be developed basically overnight. I don't know how vaccine trials would work for a modified vaccine though. Either way, the mutations that have been identified so far don't seem to suggest they will be able to get around immunity from vaccines. This is not the first time this virus has evolved into a more contagious form. It's obviously something to watch out for though, as well as the possibility of a recombination of this virus with another animal coronavirus.

Weekly coronavirus deaths in IL are on the order of some entire YEARS for the flu here now, going off estimates of the national flu death toll in previous years. As expected, the virus has begun tearing through my relatives, and a couple of them are in bad shape.

lol this is just Musk's way of announcing he has the virus. He couldn't do it without first undermining pandemic mitigation efforts. Anything short of him going on a ventilator he'll claim as "cold like symptoms". It's no secret that rapid tests aren't super accurate. However they do have their use, especially for preventing outbreaks at long term care facilities. Rapid tests have identified infected staff at the facility my mom works as a nurse in, and this likely prevented big outbreaks there.

Unchecked exponential growth going on for weeks now. I don't know why I am shocked at this point. It's crazy knowing that this virus is going to burn through most people I know and there's nothing I can do about it. I was on a walk a few nights ago when it was still warm out and I saw my neighbor get carried away in a stretcher. He's dead now. I have yet to hear whether it was coronavirus related or not, but I would be surprised if it wasn't at this point. I had just seen him walking dogs a few weeks ago. These next few months are going to be a dark time.

The squall line yesterday was a great way to end an amazing stretch of November warmth!! I'm curious to see if the NWS will classify it as a derecho, because it seems to fit the criteria of the serial type. I drove out to near Galesburg, IL with the hope of catching some semi-discrete stuff but ended up just enjoying the squall. Here's my video of the storm. The wind gust at 2:39 was ridiculous!! I'm curious what that would have clocked in as. Tree damage was fairly minimal in the area due to the lack of leaves.

I'm astonished how nice the weather has been! A well needed slice of heaven in an otherwise terrible year. Haven't broken any daily records here yet but the duration of this warmth is impressive to say the least. That topped with bright sunshine is hard to beat. The only thing that would make it better would be finishing off this warm spell with a nice fall severe setup.

This worries me: https://www.reuters.com/article/health-coronavirus-denmark-mink/denmark-to-cull-entire-mink-herd-amid-mutation-fears-for-coronavirus-vaccine-idINKBN27K1YV The virus has been tearing through mink farms for several months now, and mutations have been cooking up during this time. It's jumped back to humans on more than one occasion as well. According to the article, there is a mink strain that is back circulating in humans that may be resistant to antibodies from the human strains of the virus. This would be a major issue for vaccine prospects as well. I can't find any literature on the new claims, so hopefully this will just be a scare. Even so, we need to be vigilant at monitoring the strains circulating in animals so we don't end up back at square 1.

The weather today was eerily pleasant considering the circumstances. https://twitter.com/spann/status/1323737823032320006?s=20

It took ~30 years for heard immunity to finally beat out the H1N1 virus that caused the Spanish flu, and of course there were many millions of deaths in that time span. If the theory about Russian flu being caused by the coronavirus OC43 is true, then herd immunity never killed it off as it still circulates today. Don't get me wrong, the new coronavirus is never going away either, but many of the deaths and severe illness can be mitigated if it follows the pattern of other pandemics. A vaccine won't make it all go away, but there's a lot of reason to believe it will significantly reduce mortality. The H1N1 vaccine developed for 2010 would have actually prevented many of the deaths associated with the Spanish flu, even though it wasn't specifically targeted for it. A SARS2 coronavirus vaccine may not give complete immunity for a long time, but there's good reason to believe the partial immunity it may provide down the road will be enough to beat down the virus into something much less severe in most people. Remember that this coronavirus often directly interferes with immune function, so a vaccine designed to produce an optimal antibody response has a lot more hope for inducing immunity than from direct infection.

I find it crazy that the president was given the experimental polyclonal antibody treatment. Not because of the method itself, but the fact that an experimental drug tested on ~300 people was given to the POTUS. That's a big deal.

Those people were likely infected with both as the coronavirus hit the US during the peak of flu season. Interestingly, flu cases in the southern hemisphere have been WAY down during their winter, which is at least in part due to all the measures taken to limit the spread of the coronavirus. Assuming we keep covid social distancing measures to some extent going into our usual flu season, we should also see a dramatic decrease as these measures work for the flu as well. There's also an argument to be made that the more contagious virus tends to fill the niche for infectious respiratory illness when it comes to spread, and the 2009 H1N1 flu is evidence to support this.

Wearing a mask while playing contact sports isn't going to be nearly as dangerous and the virus or even the sports themselves. However, I doubt cloth face coverings are going to do much to prevent transmission during contact sports anyway due to the heavy breathing involved. I was a martial arts instructor before the pandemic, but I think it's silly to be doing contact sports right now. I wish mask compliance at places like the grocery store was higher so it would be a lower risk to others by keeping gyms open. I can't blame my friends/family for being willing to accept the risk by going to the gym, but when I make the mistake of logging on to social media and seeing them fight for their life to not wear a mask, or even deny that the virus exists, I can't help but think we deserve this mess that we're in.

It's been gloomy the past couple days, but the storms on the 7th were top notch. They weren't severe but they produced the best lightning of the year by far. There were several supercell structures embedded on the south side of a big blob running along the frontal boundary, and they periodically blasted the rain free portion with huge CG bolts. I swear it's fall/winter that give the best storms here in IL. It must be those colder cloud tops. cool rolling shutter effect from my dashcam picked up some streamer bolts before the main strike

https://twitter.com/NWSLincolnIL/status/1300857274706006021?s=2 This rain is very welcome here! The dry weather has caused a lot of the trees here to start dropping leaves.

This was a memorable storm for me for sure! When that PDS severe watch got issued, I threw all my gear in my car and headed up to the Oglesby, IL area. I pointed my car into the wind as it approached and enjoyed the show. The area took some serious damage and I encountered several roads blocked by downed trees and flipped semis on my way out. Unfortunately I bumped my dash cam into autofocus at some point so I ended up getting 50GB of macro footage of raindrops on my windshield.

August is the only time I'll welcome relatively cool and drizzly weather. It's been like this for days now and it's great.

Wow PIA got soaked. Nearly 3" in an hour and over 5" for the event

I'm near Goodfield which is about halfway between Bloomington and Peoria. We got missed by pretty much everything last month.

Had some nice storms yesterday, nothing crazy but it brought some desperately needed rain (and lightning ) Received about 3/4" of rain which was more than the entire month of June here.

CRAZY tornado in Minnesota yesterday! This is some of the most ridiculous tornado footage I've ever seen.